Stolen iPhone Get’s Followed Around the World

Before you read: some questions to help you think about the topic and the words you might need.

How would you feel if your smartphone was stolen?

Is it possible to catch someone if they steal your phone? How?

A digital hunt for an iPhone that was lost in a New York City bar a year ago and that ended up in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong has brought together two unlikely strangers: Matt Stopera, an editor, and a man who has become known online in China as “Brother Orange.”

Mr. Stopera, who lost his phone in February 2014, believed he would never see it again after he walked out of New York bar one night where he had spent some time after work with colleagues.

But then strange pictures including hundreds of pictures of fireworks displays, menus, the Canadian singer Avril Lavigne and, perhaps most tellingly, a mysterious Chinese man standing before an orange tree started showing up on his photo stream on the new phone he had bought.

Alarmed but also pleasantly surprised by the stranger’s photos, Mr. Stopera eventually went to an Apple store, where he was advised to log onto his iCloud account and to delete everything on his old phone. The iPhone thus became unusable for the stranger who was taking photos on the other side of the world.

At that point, Mr. Stopera assumed the story of his iPhone was over, but he posted online an article about his lost phone and the mysterious images that followed its disappearance. After his post was translated into Chinese, it drew the attention of thousands of people in China.

Chinese Internet users, including one with an account on the microblogging platform Sina Weibo called “Helping Search for Brother Orange” and staff members at Sina Weibo, soon began a campaign to track down the person who had Mr. Stopera’s phone.

The users identified the place the images had been taken as Guangdong. Then, a microblog user from Guangdong who identified himself as a nephew of Brother Orange uploaded three pictures of a man eating dinner and a picture of a black iPhone, with the message: “Is this the Brother Orange you are looking for?”

Brother Orange himself then created a Sina Weibo account describing himself as “Brother Orange who doesn’t sell oranges” and sent a greeting to Mr. Stopera.

Brother Orange explained that the iPhone was a gift from a distant relative. He then extended his greeting one step further, by inviting Mr. Stopera to visit China.

“Matt, you’re welcome to come visit my home and try its famous local dishes,” he posted in Chinese.

Mr. Stopera, who has described the phone hunt as a “great journey” and said he was delighted by Brother Orange’s images of China, responded:

“Bro Orange! I would love to come visit you soon! What do you think?”

Brother Orange confirmed the invitation on Weibo, and the story has been read by more than 30 million people in China.  Mr. Stopera has also received tour-guide services and language instruction from a large number of people online.

As it transpired, Mr. Stopera visited Bro Orange in China. In China Mr. Stopera had become a celebrity and when he stepped off the airplane he was greeted by media people with cameras, something that totally took him by surprise.

Try to guess the meaning of the words in bold and match them with their closest meaning from the choices in the right. Some of the answers are very close and have similar meaning. The meaning of these words is how they are used in the reading. Some of these words have different meanings in the dictionary depending on how they are used.

 The answers are below the table.